The United Automobile Workers asked the National Labor Relations Board on Friday to order a new unionization election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., asserting that the union’s loss last week was because of improper interference by the state’s lawmakers.

The complaint filed with the labor board asserts that statements made by Senator Bob Corker and some state lawmakers amounted to “threats” that swayed the VW workers to vote against the U.A.W. In a stinging defeat for the union, workers at the Chattanooga plant voted 712 to 626 against joining the U.A.W., even though the company did not oppose the unionization effort.

You see, disagreement with your organized crime overlords is always “improper interference”. Whatever the Union does to enforce control must be the proper sort of interference, one supposes.

The bad news here is that the NLRB is pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Just how far they’re willing to go to push a Senator remains to be seen, and should be interesting.

Smitty: Some of your wife’s (former) countrymen (who are in their union) want to pressure VW to have a union in Tennessee…(but if that means the plant there fails and they get more production jobs back in Germany, I suppose they would not be too upset with that either).

And yes, the Democrats and O are into it too.

jakee308 February 22nd, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

Hate to be a Cassandra here but it seems that everyone looks at the results of this vote as some kind of mandate or overwhelming tide of anti unionism.

It’s not.

The vote was only separated by a small percent. Now that does count as a win but it’s not an indication of overwhelming support for right to work.

Almost half were ready to have the union in. In fact the appeal by the union is logical given that they only lost by a small number of votes.

Sorry but those are the facts and no one should blow up the result into something it’s not.

As with the assault on Scott Walker, the joy is seeing the unions pour that much treasure into an effort and lose.

Southern Air Pirate February 22nd, 2014 @ 5:07 pm

Both the UAW and the VW just months prior to the vote were scrambling for NRLB rulings. Between VW claiming that the UAW was looking to violate the NRLA’s statues on how and whom the worker’s councils shall represent to UAW claiming that VW was supposedly intimidating people by having the office help (secretaries and the engineers whom are covered by SPEEA) who can’t unionize with the UAW were seen and photographed wearing anti-UAW gear. Both sides agreed to an arbitrated settlement of throwing the complaints out and just run on the results of the vote.
Now the question is will the VW management bring charges against the UAW if they proceed with this NRLB thing. Also, it would be interesting to see what the courts have to say about the illegal NRLB appointments and if the UAW gains a victory early on only to see it invalidated because of the illegal board appointments.

rustypaladin February 22nd, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

Not so sure it would bring jobs back to Germany. One would have to ask how much it costs VW to bring their cars to the US. Would the market bear the price increase?

Given management did not oppose the vote and gave zero resources to resist it, the union had full access to the plant and workers to make its pitch, and there was no rebuttal (other than the workers themselves saying no), I would take this as a bigger victory than a relatively close vote would appear on face value.

joethefatman February 22nd, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

^^^^ What she said!

WarEagle82 February 22nd, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

Well, I predicted the union would never stop trying, and would bring in the government to force Citizens employed at the factory to accept unionization against their will.

And this wasn’t a “small percent” win as someone claimed. The results were 54% to 46%. That is an 8 point margin and in a presidential elections considered a drubbing.

Still, the absolute numbers are small and if the union thugs can pressure 50 or 60 people into “reconsidering” their views, or just not voting, they could get their way.